Friday, April 24, 2009

There's one change on the radio side in Toledo, and one change coming related to TV in that market.

OMW readers tell us that Matrix talk WNWT/1520 Rossford has indeed abandoned the talk format in favor of a simulcast of co-owned WNKL/96.9 Wauseon's "K-Love" Christian contemporary music format.

The two stations are in the process of being sold by Matrix, the broadcast arm of Toledo's Cornerstone Church, to "K-Love" owner Educational Media Foundation. WNKL has been running the "K-Love" format under an LMA between Matrix/Cornerstone and EMF for some time.

We're also reminded that WNKL has something of a nominal in-market FM presence in Toledo to complement the western 96.9 rimshot signal, with one of K-Love's thousands of translators on 104.1 appearing on the WNKL legal ID.

That'd be W281AL Harbor View, with a 19 watt translator on Toledo's north side. There are other K-Love translators in the market, but only 104.1 earns a place on the local legal ID - with just a mention, not an actual legal ID for the translator.

Anyway, we're wondering if W281AL is enough of a fill, combined with the main 96.9 signal, that EMF considers 1520 unnecessary as a K-Love repeater...and if the format is on the current WNWT to stay, or just to run something until it gets disposed to someone else.

1520 in the Toledo market has a recent history playing religious formats. It was "Dominion 1520" under Cornerstone Church until the group decided to flip to talk recently.

On the TV side, a new HDTV subchannel is scheduled to debut soon.

RabbitEars.info's Trip Ericson, who watches such developments, tells us that the home/lifestyle channel "Live Well HD" is about to plant itself on the 13.2 subchannel of ABC/Disney O&O WTVG/13, currently occupied by a channel dedicated to repeats of WTVG's local newscasts.

Quoting:

Live Well HD Network, a fully high definition and digital broadcast, online and wireless network, is being launched by the 10 ABC-owned television stations reaching about 24-percent of America's TV homes.---The network's initial series include "Home with Lisa Quinn" on interior design, "Let's Dish" on healthy cooking, "Mirror/Mirror" on beauty and fashion, "Say Ahh..." on health and medicine, "Motion" on outdoor activities, and "Advice for Life" on personal growth.---The 10 ABC-owned television stations launching Live Well HD Network today are WABC-TV in New York, KABC-TV in Los Angeles, WLS-TV in Chicago, WPVI-TV in Philadelphia, KGO-TV in San Francisco, KTRK-TV in Houston, WTVD-TV in Raleigh-Durham, KFSN-TV in Fresno, WJRT-TV in Flint and WTVG-TV in Toledo.

The debut of the new subchannel network is set for Monday.

But 13.2's existing programming won't entirely go away, apparently...as the Live Well HD programming will (from what we can gather) share time with the local news repeats.

Here's a schedule for the Toledo version of Live Well HD. The schedule says in addition to appearing over-air on digital 13.2, it's slated for Buckeye Cablevision channel 614. (That's where WTVG's "Plus" 13.2 subchannel already airs.)

Sure enough, there are schedule holes there that would presumably be filled by the WTVG local news repeats, or similar programming already airing on the other ABC O&O's secondary digital channels.

Though the local news repeats are presumably in SD format, we hear that Live Well HD will be chomping up WTVG-DT's bandwidth in 720p HDTV format.

We're wondering if they'll see some of the occasional glitches seen over in Youngstown, where New Vision's WKBN-DT is airing both CBS and Fox (WYFX "Fox Youngstown") programming in 720p HD...